The present invention relates to an apparatus according to the preamble of claim 1 for cleaning the teats of animal.
A problem when milking dairy animals is how to ensure that the teats of the animal are clean before milking commences. As manual teat cleaning is labour-intensive, inefficient and time consuming various machines for cleaning teats have been proposed.
The German patent DE 127 384 describes a device with a plurality of elongated brushes mounted vertically on a holder. The brushes can rotate about their vertical central axis and have horizontally projecting bristles which can brush the surface of any teats introduced vertically down between the brushes. As the teat advances downwards the bristles are pushed down and away from the tip of the teat. A problem with this device is that when the teat is fed down between the brushes it its downward movement is resisted by the bristles and the teat is axially compressed. This causes skin folds or increases the depth of the skin folds already present and lead to inadequate cleaning of the teat.
An object of the present invention is to overcome the problems of the prior art teat cleaning devices. These problems are overcome by a teat cleaning device having the features mentioned in the characterising portion of claim 1.
In the present invention the vertically mounted rotatable brushes are provided with a cleaning surface which is arranged in a spiral or helical shape.
By a suitable choice of the direction of the spiral surface and the direction of rotation of the cleaning brushes, as the teat is introduced into the device the rotating brushes can be made to grip the teat and drag it downwards. This stretches the skin of the teat thereby reducing or eliminating the skin folds and allowing the cleaning surface to clean substantially the whole of the surface of the teat.